Lead us not into victory.

The National Council of Churches has problems. Not the usual problems Christians would naturally be expected to suffer Here Below, on this ever-less-than-perfect planet. On the contrary, the NCC seems to be happy as a clam and busy as a beaver on the good old Rock of Ages; going to and fro, and walking up and down in it. They fit right in. They mount Crusades against the infidel enemies of Affirmative Action, rail against the School Voucher heresy, render unto the United Nations that which belongs to the United Nations (pretty much everything, apparently), chase the purveyors of non-recycled paper out of the temple, and work tirelessly in obedience to Christ's supreme injunction: Thou shalt establish a Palestinian Homeland, pronto ---- right where the state of Israel is now, if necessary.

Nobody ever said being a Christian was easy, or that all the signs on the road of life would be clearly and unmistakably marked. Christianity is no cure for being human, so we're still at times taking the wrong exits, running the yellow lights, and failing to make proper use of our turn signals. We tend to forget that we're imperfect beings, spiritually as well as physically, and that we need to forgive each other for our short-comings --- even when we're not merely "falling short of glory" but behaving like complete idiots.

We also forget that Christ didn't authorize any utopian construction project, saying instead "My kingdom is not of this world." There sure is a lot of inconvenient scripture ... couldn't we just skip over that part of the text, Reverend? After all, we're all nice, decent, church-going folks, with enough good intentions to pave a four-lane cloverleaf highway straight to Hell. If there was such a place as Hell; being progressive Christians, we're pretty sure there isn't. At worst, Hell will turn out to be another phony tourist trap.

So we're still screwed up, which is why Christ took on the sins of the world. Trouble is, some people seem to think that taking on the sins of the world is the job of the United States. They want to heap it all on our backs, after which we're expected to do the decent thing and submit to crucifixion (possibly with Israel on the one hand and NATO on the other). In this scenario, Christ is reduced to playing the bit part of Pontius Pilate, handing us over to our enemies with his blessing.

But the United States makes a most unconvincing Christ. We don't seem to be paying attention. We're supposed to march meekly to Calvary, but we're always wandering off in the opposite direction. We won't wear the crown of thorns because it doesn't go with our shoes. We keep taking the scourge away from the funny little people who want to hit us with it. Worse yet, we patronize them by buying them lunch and offering to pay to have their teeth fixed. How arrogant and infuriating we are.

Arrogant we may be, but we're not completely stupid. We know perfectly well that our own demise would not redeem the sins of the world. On the contrary, it would make the world poorer and more miserable than ever --- a fact that our enemies are fully aware of. They're not out to save humanity, but to reduce it to a state of slavery. Their idea of the Peaceable Kingdom is Cuba, North Korea, and the Gaza strip. A military and economic superpower that believes in freedom and human rights is an obstacle to their petty tyranny. If they ever succeeded in nailing us up, they wouldn't expect to see us back in three days, or ever.

Of course the NCC doesn't want to enslave the world. They probably don't even want to hurt the United States. Nor could they, even if they tossed back a year's supply of Communion wine and went on a drunken rampage. Fear them not. There are knaves, and then there are fools. Let us suffer them gladly for a moment and consider this document that they just nailed to the church door. Entitled "Deny Them Their Victory, A Religious Response to Terrorism", it is currently posted on the NCC website (www.ncccusa.org). No precise authorship is given for this interfaith statement, and it apparently is not the sole product of the NCC, but it carries their full endorsement and it hangs prominently around their neck like a cross (or a dead albatross).

We would say that most of it was unobjectionable ... if not for the fact that we object to Christian phrases being used as styrofoam packing for another shipment of the NCC's political freight. Too much of this cheesy merchandise has already been left on our doorstep. Like so many sub-standard products, it is always accompanied by an annoying advertising campaign. Take for example the NCC's pretentious and false television ad, in which a voice (speaking in mystical cadence) solemnly informs us that "The richest nation on God's earth most pollutes the earth, trapping the heat of the sun. Threatening the earth. We are called upon to save the earth ..." Save it from the United States, its number one enemy (which the NCC does not have the courage to name except by implication --- do they really have the guts to save the earth from us awful Americans?) This particular load of intellectual toxic waste was brought to you by nice, decent, church-going American Christians, who have more money than sense. Their money was brought to them by our wonderful system of free enterprise, right here in the nation that threatens the earth with an abundance of clean drinking water and flush toilets. Somebody stop us before we spread energy efficiency and anti-pollution technology to every corner of the globe. Save the earth before the United States buries it in our spare cash ...

But back to the statement at hand. We are invited to add our signature to it, which reveals it to be a petition, not a mere expression, or a prayer. Maybe the NCC feels that prayers should be signed and forwarded to the Almighty in triplicate. For our part, we hesitate to treat with the maker of heaven and earth as if He were our local Public Utilities Commissioner. Therefore we call it a petition, and we ask, Who are we petitioning, and for what?

Parsing through the six skimpy paragraphs, we are at first confused. We are surely not asking permission to go to church, love our neighbors, and lend aid and support to the victims of tragedy. We don't need a by-your-leave from anybody to do that. We'll do that whether anyone objects to it or not; in fact, we'll fight for the right to do it .... oh. Okay. NOW we get it.

"We must not, out of anger and vengeance, indiscriminately retaliate in ways that bring on even more loss of innocent life." Well, no one on our side wants to see innocent life lost. And no one is in favor of indiscriminate action, such as firing off Tomahawk missiles on randomly-determined compass headings. Neither should anyone favor actions taken in anger, or motivated by a desire for simple vengeance. For our part, we wish no particular vengeance inflicted on Osama bin Laden and his ilk. In fact, we could imagine no worse fate for Osama bin Laden than to let him go on being Osama bin Laden: sitting in his miserable little bunker with his AK-47, his fax machine, and a brain full of bloody hallucinations. We suspect that Osama bin Laden lives each moment of his life with all the contentment and serenity of a dog passing a peach pit. If vengeance was what we wanted, the Lord beat us to it.

But vengeance is not the issue. The protection of innocent life, at home and abroad, is the issue. Furthermore, it makes no difference what we want, or whether we are angry or not. It is our duty to protect innocent life, insofar as we are capable of doing so. In accordance with this duty, we reject pacifism, and we reject the suggestion that Christians must be pacifists or stand compromised in our faith. To ask our non-Christian countrymen to do likewise would be ridiculous. To leave millions of innocents at the mercy of those like bin Laden, who would exterminate them, is not turning your cheek. It's turning your back on your fellow man. We don't bow down to those who seek our wholesale slaughter, in order to prove our own superior sensibility, or the meek will inherit not the earth, but a mass grave.

"The terrorists have offered us a stark view of the world they would create, where the remedy to every human grievance and injustice is a resort to the random and cowardly violence of revenge � even against the most innocent ... But we can deny them their victory by refusing to submit to a world created in their image." The terrorists would hardly begrudge us such a "victory", in which we defeat them by refusing to defeat them, as we take this to clearly imply. They could care less what world we live in, so long as we take leave of this one. It is the height of self-absorbed delusion to think that such massacres are staged in order to test the resolve of guilt-ridden pacifists, or that terrorists can be shamed into submission by those who are quick to forgive and excuse the murder of other human beings (often from what they believe to be a safe distance). The terrorists are not afraid of a non-violent response from us; in fact, they were counting on it.

"Let us make the right choices in this crisis - to pray, act, and unite against the bitter fruits of division, hatred, and violence. Let us rededicate ourselves to global peace, human dignity, and the eradication of injustice that breeds rage and vengeance." They mince words. We won't mince ours. We're already dedicated to global peace --- our enemies are not. We already believe in human dignity --- they don't. Our policies are not predicated on hatred --- theirs are. We didn't divide the world into two camps --- they did. We flatly refuse to unite against "violence" in any sense which equates security and self-defense with the violence of terrorism. Equating the use of American military power in defense of ourselves, our allies, and innocent persons abroad with terrorism is the formula of our enemies, and we reject it utterly. What we will unite against is deliberate violence perpetrated against innocent human beings in an attempt to force changes in U.S. foreign policy. Changes which are, by the way, themselves repugnant to any reasonable Christian sensibility, as they are intended to deliver an entire region of the world into the hands of those who would enslave Muslims, and murder Christians and Jews to the last woman and child. We will use violence to prevent still greater violence, and we refuse to confound the just and reasonable use of force with plain and simple murder.

Which brings us to the final clause: the eradication of injustice that breeds rage and vengeance. No injustice was avenged on September 11th. Rather, decades of good will were repaid with savagery. It is true that American foreign policy is not perfect, and has sometimes been wrong-headed in the extreme. But it has never been conducted with hostility towards those who now claim to be so grievously injured by it, and if it has brought injustice to any it has also shielded many more from even greater injustice. The United States has invested vast amounts of money and effort in improving peaceful Middle East relations, and that is precisely why the terrorists preach hatred against us. They want the overthrow of all moderate Arab regimes, the destruction of Israel, and the bloody suppression of all political and religious dissent. They are not protesting injustice, but demanding injustice, and it would be most unjust to let them have it.

Passivity and concession will not "break the cycle of violence". The violence is intended to force concession from us. Rewarding such violence will not end it, but encourage it to ever greater and bloodier exploits. The terrorists like to blame all of the region's misery on the U.S. and claim that it is the result of a deliberate policy of "state-sponsored terrorism" inflicted on them by a cruel and powerful foe. But get one of their leaders in front of a CNN camera crew and let him wax eloquent on the subject; he'll betray a different tone. They don't regard Americans as cruel and violent, but as weak and easily intimidated. They gleefully boast of their own willingness to kill and be killed (or at least, to allow their miserable underlings to be killed) and they take this lack of regard for human life as a mark of superior character. When such people speak of "injustice" and "oppression", we are not moved.

It is an article of faith (they have to believe in something) among Christian progressives that "violence never solves anything ... violence only breeds more violence." Sorry, but we dissent. Hitler's hash was thoroughly settled, and we didn't do it with a prayer breakfast and a petition drive. From Carthage to the Confederate States of America, history is strewn with cases that were permanently closed by blood and iron, for better or worse. Besides being false, this sentiment has too long served as a ready excuse for every kind of murderous act --- if a terrorist or a criminal kills, it's only because some past violence was perpetrated on him. He can't help it. Give him what he wants, and he won't do it again.

We don't know how to make it any plainer than that; unfortunately, we fear that it is still not plain enough for the NCC. We remember the NCC "Resolution on Conflict in the Middle East", adopted less than a year ago, which condemns Israeli military action against Palestinians at great length, but which makes no mention of violence committed against Israelis, or Lebanese Christians, or Iraqi Kurds. Indeed, it contains not one syllable that might knock the delicate noses of Saddam Hussein and Yassir Arafat out of joint.

For decades the PLO has taken young Palestinian boys not yet in their teens, armed them with explosives, and sent them on suicidal raids across Israeli borders. We disapprove of that sort of thing. We would expect that the nice folks at the NCC would have something to say about that, and so we turn to their November 1999 resolution against the use of children as soldiers. Here again is as fine a collection of pious phrases as ever rolled off the edge of a pulpit. May we have an example to illustrate the point, Reverend? Yes, a single specific charge does appear in the resolution, a single culprit to serve as a target for all this well-tooled righteous indignation. The subject of our sermon is ... American military schools.